To defend or not to defend, that is the question!

[bjcheung77]

No, I am not referring to your dissertation or thesis.  Would you or would you not shoot yourself in the foot by defending an employee that's working really well with the team or is a high-performance member in your team?  

I just came across this article, there are many other corporations that operate with similar performance improvement programs, some of them are just to kick out the employee...  I've never put myself in this situation before, hmm, I do wonder sometimes what I would do...

Link: I was a manager at Amazon. My boss encouraged me to quit after I defended a high-performing employee who was about to get the lowest performance rating. (msn.com)